J

Jacobins

The Jacobins were a revolutionary group during the French Revolution of
1789 onwards, and their principal fight was for the creation of a single national
parliament, democratically expressing the will of the people and solely sym-
bolizing thesovereigntyof the state. Revolutionary leaders, such as Lenin,
who have ruled through centrally-imposed decision, as they maintain for the
good of the populace, have also been described as Jacobin. Its modern use,
especially in French politics, derives from this early concern with central
authority, the objection to what was calledpouvoirs interme ́diaires, the feudal
idea of a hierarchy of levels of authority, with legitimate foci of power and
citizen-loyalty between the individual and the state. In its modern guise this
becomes an insistence that all important decisions be made centrally in a state,
and that only the official central government should in any way express
sovereignty or be seen as entitled to legitimacy and loyalty. Thus politicians
in France who are regarded as Jacobin deny the need for semi-autonomous
regional governments, and would also oppose anydelegationof decision-
making power to other national institutions. France is, in fact, notable for its
degree ofcentralizationof policy-making, as much on minor as on major
issues. Thus decisions as trivial as the renaming of a tiny commune, or as
important, but elsewhere non-standardized, as which textbooks should be used
in schools, are entirely controlled from Paris. It is interesting that this Jacobin
position cuts across ordinary party ideological gulfs. The two most Jacobin
parties in recent French orthodox politics have been from the extreme left and
right of orthodox politics: theParti Communiste Franc ̧ais (PCF)and from
Gaullism, the Rassemblement pour la Re ́publique (RPR). Both insisted on
the primacy of central government, while theParti Socialisteand, to much
the same extent, the centre-right, were committed to regionalism and decen-
tralization. There is no reason why the label Jacobin should not be used of
politicians in other countries, but it has its particular importance in France
simply because the Jacobins were so successful for so very long, to the almost
total exclusion of real local government even until the late 20th century.